The Kentucky senator won a raucous welcome at the Iowa Republican Party’s Lincoln Dinner Friday, drawing an energetic reception that most declared presidential candidates would envy – let alone a first-term senator on an early 2016 scouting mission.

A notable exception was immigration, when Paul told a nearly silent room that he might end up supporting immigration reform, unlike two prominent Iowa Republicans who denounced “amnesty” in remarks from the same stage.

“While I respect Sen. Grassley and Congressman King, we may not be on the same page,” Paul said, adding: “We may be.”

Still, years before the next round of presidential primaries, Paul’s confident performance here underscored why national Republicans tend to view him as a real contender for the next GOP nomination.

Put simply, if you designed a candidate in a lab to match up with the early GOP primary states, it would probably look a lot like Rand Paul.

Strategists in both parties are deeply skeptical of Paul as a general election candidate, given his relative political inexperience and unconventional stances on issues from national security to drug control.

But in the momentum-driven early-state race, Paul begins a couple steps ahead of the starting line: He has an unusual national following and a reputation as a conservative warrior, a down-to-earth demeanor and – perhaps most important – an activist base left over from the campaigns of his father, former Texas Rep. Ron Paul.

He already appeals to his dad’s fervent followers — who clearly helped fill the Lincoln Dinner crowd — but Rand also has a level of credibility with evangelical voters and fed-up mainstream conservatives that Ron never had.

And as the GOP as a whole has inched in a libertarian direction, abandoning George W. Bush-style “compassionate conservatism” for a purer focus on small government, Rand Paul is among his party’s most fluent ideological advocates. Voters who know relatively little about him are at least curious to know the man who delivered that 13-hour filibuster on drones.

If Paul can weld together those constituencies, then veterans of past Iowa and New Hampshire campaigns say that puts him in something like a political sweet spot.